DBMS > Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. searchxml vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. searchxml vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#25	Search engines

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.searchxml.net/category/products

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

informationpartners gmbh

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2010

1989

1992

2015

2019

Current release

V12

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

17, July 2015

1.0

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

yes

on the application server

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

multiple readers, single writer

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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